The Center for Law, Brain & Behavior puts the most accurate and actionable neuroscience in the hands of judges, lawyers, policymakers and journalists—people who shape the standards and practices of our legal system and affect its impact on people’s lives. We work to make the legal system more effective and more just for all those affected by the law.
During summer 2014, WBUR ran a special series on the current state, potential, and limitations of neuroscience. The series covered:
Brain Images: New Techniques And Bright Colors
5 Ways The Brain Stymies Scientists And 5 New Tools To Crack It, an interview with CLBB Faculty member Steve Hyman
Unlocking The Brain: Are We Entering A Golden Age Of Neuroscience?
11 Young Neuroscientists Share Their Cutting-Edge Research
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Neuroimaging is making subjective mental states, like physical and emotional pain, visible and verifiable. How much should the law change with this new insight into the mind? Professor Hank Greely of the Stanford School of Law shares an optimistic yet cautious exploration of these cutting-edge issues in law & neuroscience. Dr. Greely is Director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences and former Co-director of the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project.
The talk was delivered as the Stuart Rome Lecture during the conference “Imaging the Brain, Changing Minds: Chronic Pain Neuroimaging and the Law,” at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law on April 24, 2014, presented in part by the Law & Health Care Program.
On April 24-25, 2014, the symposium, Imaging the Brain, Changing Minds: Chronic Pain Neuroimaging and the Law, took place at the University of Maryland School of Law.
An interdisciplinary collaboration between pain neuroimaging researchers, legal decision-makers, and legal scholars, the symposium’s goal was to create dialogue between these fields, and to make legal actors aware of recent, breakthrough work in neuroimaging that has led to a paradigm shift in understanding chronic pain. This new science may have the potential to change legal doctrines and shift legal and cultural norms about chronic pain diseases and their sufferers. Doing so responsibly requires understanding the potential of the science, and also its limits.
CLBB Faculty member, Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, and pain expert Amanda Pustilnik, JD, was an organizer for this roundtable. The symposium was attended by a selection of law and neuroscience scholars, including Hank Greely, Martha Farah, and the Hon. Nancy Gertner, a CLBB Faculty member and Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School. Greely delivered the keynote, “Neuroimaging, Mind Reading, and the Courts;” the video is available here.
This event was jointly sponsored by the Law & Health Care Program at University of Maryland Carey Law School, the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
NSF has launched a new portal dedicated to the agency’s brain research funding opportunities and news. The Understanding the Brain portal arrives on the first anniversary of President Barack Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative announcement, and will allow visitors to the site to find brain-related information across the agency in one place.
The portal includes NSF’s specific thematic research areas for the BRAIN Initiative, the latest funding and event announcements, and a list of core programs that support neuroscience research, in addition to public-facing articles and videos about new findings.
While brain science has helped to characterize many aspects of the human experience, there is no consensus about whether it could also be used to help address some of society’s “big” problems.
On Thursday, April 17, 2014, CLBB hosted a conversation at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center of Harvard Medical School, with experts in psychology, philosophy and neuroscience to debate whether neuroscience has anything useful to add to our understanding of thorny ethical and legal questions, such as whether addiction should be considered a “brain disease,” the nature of free will, and how societies should determine personal responsibility. Video of the event is included below in its entirety and at our Vimeo page.
A recurring theme of the evening’s discussion was how to determine which level of analysis – from molecules and genes to brain structures and systems to individuals and social systems – is the most important to consider for understanding the mind. While all panelists agreed that any discussion of the brain’s contribution to behavior should be embedded within a multi-level approach, there was considerable disagreement around whether the brain’s contribution should be considered privileged or not. Continue reading »
